A Dozen Images of Dad

Dad at 2, right, with his father and brothers.

Dad knew quite a bit about bad poetry.

While cleaning out the garage this past summer, I found a folder of long, badly-rhymed "odes" that Dad evidently wrote about work and Navy Reserve colleagues as anniversary or retirement gifts.

He also knew quite a bit about good poetry. Mom still fondly recalls how he used to recite Shakespeare to her.

At his best, like all of us, he had the soul of a poet. He worked for the telephone company; he wanted to be an architect.

Mom and I still talk about (and sometimes "to") Dad. It would have been his 89th birthday today, but he died when he was 73.

Holding a pitchfork, with his mother (who shared his birthday and would have been 120 today) at the wheel.

There's no "Ode to Dad" in the folder I found in the garage.

These fragments will have to do:

1. Shark-skin suits and Navy dress whites

2. A 13-year-old sandlot pitcher snapping off a tightly spun sinker

3. A 16-year-old's calligraphy drawing of Christ's last words

4. The smell of Old Spice and hair gel

5. Cigarette smoke (Kents)

6. Eggs over easy, bacon and rye toast

7. A round stain of bourbon on the counter of a bar

8. Crafting a too-perfect Pinewood Derby car

9. A 32-year-old storming a convent to defend his son

10. The intricate paint job on a precision plastic model of the U.S.S. Midway

11. Mills Brother records

12. Sentimental tears